[Illustration:  THE TEMPLE OF THE SUN.  CUZCO.

From “Histoire des Yncas,” Amsterdam, 1737.]

Encouraged by such minor successes, the Inca army advanced against the main bodies of the Spaniards.  Some historians place the numbers of the native troops at no fewer than 200,000.  With astonishing suddenness the situation became altered.  Pizarro found himself besieged in Lima, while his brothers, shut up in Cuzco, experienced an equal difficulty in beating off the attacks of the serried native ranks.  Had the Spanish army in Peru been left to its own devices, there is no doubt but that their doom would have been sealed.  The irony of fate, however, chose this very moment for the return of Almagro.  Marching up with his grim and travel-worn band, he found himself before Cuzco, surveying the beleaguered Spaniards and the investing Incas.

Manco Capac had gleaned something of the disputes between the European leaders.  He made advances to Almagro, and did all he could to win him to his side; but Almagro, little cause though he had to love Pizarro, proved himself stanch.  He was in consequence attacked by the Inca troops, but these he repulsed with heavy losses, and then entered Cuzco in triumph.  Manco Capac himself escaped, and retired to the other side of the Andes.

[Illustration:  INDIAN HUTS ON THE RIVER CHIPURANA.]

Almagro was destined to receive small thanks for his intervention.  The aged conquistador laid claim to the city as part of his own dominions, and this woke into fresh activity the warfare between himself and Francisco Pizarro.  Almagro, defeated, lost his head, a white and seventy-year-old head though it was.  His fate by no means ended the tragedies in Peru.  The current of sinister events was running here in a strangely full flood.  It was only three years afterwards that Pizarro himself was murdered by his enemies, the adherents of Almagro’s son, whom they wished to see elevated to the Governorship of the country, an event which actually occurred, although it proved of very short duration.

By the time this had come about, the power of the Incas had been broken for good and all, so far as practical purposes were concerned.  Driven from their temples and strongholds, certain sections of the race survived, although among them were remarkably few of the noble families who had formed the salt of the land.  Great numbers of the rank and file of the race met with the fate which was at that time so universal throughout the country, or rather in its metal-bearing lands.  They were sent to the mines, and, worked and flogged to death, their numbers diminished with a ghastly rapidity.  Some sections, more fortunate, were at a rather later age set to agriculture, and, forced to somewhat more congenial tasks than the first workers, they continued to serve the Spaniards.

CHAPTER VI

SPANIARD AND NATIVE